NEW YORK -- Reese Witherspoon is such a cute little thing that you think you could just fold her up, tuck her into your handbag and carry her away.

Think again. The diminutive Witherspoon -- she is tiny, even by Hollywood standards -- is some kind of a force of nature, all energy and intellect. The only big thing about the former debutante who was supposed to be a surgeon one day is her head -- and as any craniologist will tell you, this is a very good thing. More brain room. Trust us here.

Witherspoon is part of the ensemble cast in The Importance Of Being Earnest, a wildly amusing film version of Oscar Wilde's play that also stars Colin Firth, Dame Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, Frances O'Connor and Tom Wilkinson. We feel obligated to mention, based on comments overheard in this American city, that The Importance Of Being Earnest has nothing whatsoever to do with the late Jim Varney. Glad to have cleared that up.

Witherspoon plays Cicely, the young ward of Jack Worthing (Colin Firth). She daydreams constantly about the never-seen Earnest (Rupert Everett, more or less).

Like everybody else in the cast, she gets to chew up some truly fabulous Wilde-penned lines -- in an English accent. The accent part, the actress says, was daunting.

"I'd never done a period film with an English accent. I was petrified. I spent six weeks, three hours a day, working on my accent. I was still terrified to open my mouth when I got to the set."

And it was intimidating, she says, to have been the only American in the movie. Mostly she was nervous about working with Judi Dench. "'Cause she's Judi Dench! She has a few awards on her shelves. But she was gracious and kind. The boys were always trying to tease her into talking bad about people. And she never would."

The boys, of course, are Rupert Everett and Colin Firth. The making of Earnest appears to have been as much fun for the actors as the final product is for moviegoers.

Witherspoon, 26, became a bit of a superstar after her star turn as a ditz in Legally Blonde. In fact, the veteran actress has been at this since she was 14, when she appeared in the coming-of-age drama The Man In The Moon. She has also been in A Far Off Place, Wildflower, Fear, Election, Pleasantville, American Psycho, Cruel Intentions -- in which she starred with Ryan Phillippe, her husband -- Twilight, Best Laid Plans, Jack The Bear and Return To Lonesome Dove, among others.

Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon was raised in Nashville by a surgeon father and a mother who is a professor of nursing. The actress describes herself as a "big book dork" as a child and says she sucked her thumb until age 11. "I spent most of my childhood reading books. I didn't have a lot of friends."

Despite the adolescent start at acting, Witherspoon nonetheless finished high school and enrolled at Stanford in English Lit courses. When Robert Benton called her and offered her a role in Twilight with Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon, her university days were left behind. As she says, "Psych 101 or a movie with Paul Newman? It wasn't a hard decision."

The actress says she does feel very good about the success of Legally Blonde. Celebrity, however, has not taken her by surprise. "It hasn't been that much of a transition for me. My career has been so protracted that I've got to experience fame on incremental levels. Slowly. It wasn't a deluge.

"It was a surprise, though."

Why would success be surprising?

"I'm always surprised when anyone likes me in anything. 'Cause you act in a bubble, on a set, with a hundred people yawning and falling asleep. So you're amazed when it comes together."

Anyway, to hear her tell it, Witherspoon isn't even that well known. She says, "People think I'm Claire Danes, Christina Ricci or Alicia Silverstone. I don't get it." She laughs.

Witherspoon says she loves doing comedy. If there's going to be a Legally Blonde sequel, well, she hasn't seen a script. Her next film is Sweet Home Alabama, a comedy in which she plays a fashion designer about to marry a New York City social big-wig. She just has to extricate herself from that first, teenage marriage that nobody knows about.

What about an action movie for her? Sure, says she.

"I'm really tough in my mind. I'm only 5-foot-2 but I think I'm big. And tough."

Witherspoon has her own production company, Type A Films. "I'm not the sort of person who sits on my hands very well, so Type A was about creating opportunities for myself. It's exciting being a part of a project right from the beginning, getting to know the writer, picking the appropriate director for the material."

Through Type A, she's working on a movie about women's professional tennis, a female buddy film and an adaptation of A Girl's Guide To Hunting And Fishing.

Since 1999, Witherspoon has been married to Phillippe. They have a 21/2-year-old daughter, Ava Elizabeth. At this point in her life, says Witherspoon, "I feel very blessed. I constantly remember that I'm just a little girl from Tennessee. Ryan and I were at a rehearsal for the Oscars and we saw our names and our faces and we were sitting right up front. I nearly started to cry. I was like, 'I can't believe I made it this far.' I never dreamed it was possible.

"I always wanted to be an actress, but even so, I don't think you can even imagine such things. It was not the top career choice of all the little debutantes. I'm glad my parents were supportive of what I chose to do."

As for the glamourous life of a movie star, Witherspoon gives this as the all-time anti-having-it-all moment: "When my daughter -- she's going to kill me when she gets older and hears this -- was six months old and had the biggest poop of her life. It just exploded out of her diaper all over my clothes. I had to put her in the back of a car and change her and the paparazzi were snapping away. I felt so bad for her. She probably won't think it's funny later."


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